Paris . European stocks fell in early trade on Wednesday, as mounting doubts on how aggressive the Federal Reserve will be on further quantitative easing rattled investors and boosted the dollar. At 0705 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was down 0.4 percent at 1,085.16 points.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Fed is likely next week to unveil a programme of U.S. Treasury bond purchases worth a few hundred billion dollars over several months. In a Reuters survey earlier this month, U.S. primary dealers' projections for the size of the Fed's expected quantitative easing had ranged from $500 billion to $1.5 trillion.
"If the next round of quantitative easing is indeed lower than what people have been expected, it's going to be negative for equities, at least for U.S. stocks," said Pierre-Yves Gauthier, head of research at Alphavalue in Paris. Mining shares dropped along with metal prices, hit by the dollar's rise, with both Xstrata and Rio Tinto down 2 percent.
